Category: Politics

Okay, this is another podcast post. Well, not totally, it’s also about comedy and politics (I’ll try to let you know which is which). If you haven’t come across ‘Matt Forde’s Political Party’ before, imagine walking out of the room before the end of ‘Live at The Apollo’ and coming back in after ‘Question Time’ has started. As a format it sounds about as viable as Craig Levein’s revolutionary 4-6-0 tactic that he employed so miserably as Scotland manager, but actually it works exceptionally well and that’s a testament to Forde’s tremendous personal affability (and childishly contagious laugh).

For a single-issue party based consisting of mostly lunatic fringe members, Ukip have done very well for themselves over the last few months. In particular, they’ve established themselves as the protest vote for people who aren’t really that bothered about politics but “just want to see something done”. I’m not sure that Ukip or their voters know exactly what they want – and if you think I’m wrong about that, then please feel free to show me Ukip’s manifesto. I’m not really sure how you can even support a party that has no manifesto, and is considering buying policies in – as was reported by the Guardian on April 27.

The other day I blogged about Ed Miliband, and in particular the lack of any substance around his policies. I called him an ‘imperceptible icon’, someone in full view that you could hardly see. In looking around the Internet, I see that I was far from being the only person irked by Ed. The obvious trend was that, when writing about Ed, all you could write about was the vacuum where leadership and policy should be. The problem wasn’t the policy elephant in the room; the problem was, there was no elephant.

And today’s live car crash on Radio 4 won’t have done the Labour leader any favours at all. For those of you who missed it, Ed was interviewed by Martha Kearney on World at One. I’d like to say that it was a reasoned political debate where Ed put across sound socialist policies and provided a solid case why, in two years, we’re all going to be wearing red.

The Labour leader gives people nothing to cling to – so protest votes go elsewhere

I celebrated Manchester United’s historic 20th league title as any nerd would, by watching Newsnight. I was struck by the argument between Paul Nuttall (MEP for Ukip) and Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister Chris Bryant as they argued with the Romanian Ambassador over how many more Eastern European immigrants we might expect next January. To be honest I was only half paying attention; I was more listening to what they weren’t saying.